WE ARE PART OF A WHOLE

If we think about it from a more global and philosophical point of view, everything we do in our daily lives affects our surroundings in one way or another. We could think of our political, socioeconomic, and healthcare systems as being connected and, in turn, imagine that everything that happens in this context affects and impacts citizens in general (and vice versa) because of that connection, since we’re all part of a whole – just like the trees, which feed, communicate, and live together through their roots.

However, this intertwined network ceases to make sense if it leads us to an endogamic scenario in which learning is in a single direction, and inevitably converges in the same place, considering that wealth consists, precisely, of the heterogeneity of thought and of the variety of lenses through which the world is analyzed.

CHANGING OUR GAZE

This being the case, often when coming into contact with new elements we need to deconstruct our previous ideas in order to perceive other realities, other scenarios that allow us to establish new connections in our mental schemata and consider new unknowns.

This need to unlearn is not new. In fact, history has shown us how Aristotle and Copernicus fought against the common belief that the Earth was flat, and that it was located at the center of the universe. On the contrary, this need is recurring, since science has comings and goings, reformulations and new points of view, that greatly enrich collective knowledge.

This big commitment to the non-conforming idea of continuing to think about and reformulate what has been learned leads us to a very critical analysis of the challenges the current teaching/learning model faces. What content does today’s youth have to work on? What personal skills do they have to develop? What digital skills do they have to acquire?

EMPOWERING TALENT

What is clear is that, if we want to respond to the challenges of the decades to come, and maintain talent, a concurrence of two factors is needed. First, a clear three-way connection between education, business, and citizenship. Second, we must redress the lack (and flight) of talent able to undertake specific tasks that are emerging in this increasingly changing society, connecting the needs of citizens with academic offerings.

And then we come to the well-known question: “now what?”

Well, now is the time to intensify those networks, to listen to emerging voices that want to transmit different, innovative messages that are, undoubtedly, more pertinent to the work scenarios of the future. The time has come to pave the way to new conceptions of science, to spaces for research into concepts that we surely cannot even imagine yet, to explore other hypotheses different from those that, for decades, have represented absolute truth. As Copernicus said,

“To know that we know what we know, and to know that we do not know what we do not know - that is true knowledge.”

ACCESSIBLE KNOWLEDGE

It is precisely there, in this new scenario, where quantum technologies emerge as those great unknowns that can revolutionize the world, but have not yet been assimilated by ordinary mortals. This system, based on a new way of going about computing, beyond the binary 0 and 1, falls within a space that is still too specific and reduced, and in no way does it venture beyond the scientific realm.

For all these reasons, the democratization of this knowledge is necessary, so that new knowledge can be introduced into formal education. In this way, when the full potential of quantum technologies impacts society, there will already be people prepared to work on and with these developments. Likewise, it is urgent to mainstream this new scientific perspective so that it can permeate every discipline, not just those linked to science.

ALFAQUANTUM WAS BORN

AlfaQuantum came about exactly because of what is explained above, to reduce the existing gaps and promote universal accessibility through the dissemination of quantum knowledge, favoring new ways of thinking and learning to think, deconstructing what has been learned, and exposing people to this new scientific perspective.

For this reason, as promoters of AlfaQuantum, we are joining forces and combining knowledge to start this new adventure, fusing visions from different perspectives and disciplines and uniting a deep understanding of the educational system and pedagogy with technology.

Our team focuses on pre-university education with the aim of promoting a vocation for STEAM disciplines at earlier ages, when it is still possible to successfully shape that habit of deconstructing knowledge and building new mental schemata, always based on interests and motivations. Taking quantum technologies into the educational system and, especially, the new perspectives that these technologies will implicitly bring with them, is bound to mean that we’ll have to get out of our educational comfort zones and invest in the acquisition of new knowledge. All of this will help us to, together with students, explore new disruptive possibilities.

A POSITIVE IMPACT

This will help us to respond to the great challenge that we were talking about a few lines above: connecting education, business, and citizenship in a more efficient way, adjusting the profiles of secondary students to business realities when they finish their education, all while striving to attract and retain talent in the field.

Needless to say, and given the nature and values of our company, we at AlfaQuantum are not undertaking this journey alone. Rather, we’re connected to (and form part of) an ecosystem: the Industry-Focused Quantum Ecosystem(led by the Biscay Provincial Council), whose clear strategy is to position the region in the field of quantum technologies, and for us to become leaders in terms of both knowledge and future developments related to this area.

This is the beginning of an exciting journey to make what is not yet known accessible, to remove archaic educational barriers, to mainstream knowledge, and, above all, to connect people to build a multifaceted view of the future. We are aware that this is still an unknown and groundbreaking field in the educational sphere, but this is precisely what drives AlfaQuantum: being at the forefront of revolution and innovation as far as education is concerned.